Writer/director/producer James Cameron must take all the blame for this.

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An Illusion Review by
Joan Ellis

Wow – what an ordeal. Let’s start at the beginning – good news first. For
roughly a third of the endless length of “Avatar,” we are bewitched by the world
brought to us through 3-D glasses. Leaves sail nearly into our hands, arrows fly
toward us, characters float in the space over the audience. The screen is alive
with brilliant jungle colors and delicate combinations of birds, bats, and
dinosaurs. All this earns the movie an Oscar nomination for special effects and
audience pleasure; but before this turns into a blockbuster bandwagon, consider
the downside.

We are in the
faraway land of Pandora. Our own planet has achieved the technological capacity
to conquer foreign worlds. We can now take what we want when we want it. And so
we send to Pandora a force of combat trained marines to secure access to an
essential energy ore with the appropriate name of unobtainium. The stage is set
for a clash of cultures.

We have
heroes: Jake (Sam Worthington) and Grace (Sigourney Weaver); and we have
villains: marine Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). The colonel quickly becomes
the ugly avatar of colonialism. As Jake immerses himself in the culture, the
colonel tries to extinguish it.

From this
point forward, the movie is soaked in cliché and caricature, and the man who
must take all the blame for this is writer/director/producer James Cameron.

Mr. Cameron
immediately gives Jake an indigenous lover, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). He also
writes lines like: "We'll fix you up, Come to Papa, You're mine, and Brother, do
you read me?" Every one of these slangy lines punctures the mood of the fantasy.
Sam Worthington's Jake speaks with all the enthusiasm of a teenager spitting out
a gum ball. Once again we watch a culture thriving in peaceful beauty as it
becomes a violent inferno, crushed by American weaponry. In response, Jake leads
the population in an insurgency against the invading American aliens.

The final
love scene between Jake and Neytiri could only have sprung from the imagination
of the same man who put Leonard diCaprio and Kate Winslet on the bowsprit of the
Titanic. Tied together with tears rolling gently down their cheeks, they
represent Cameron's addiction to the obvious. His flying dinobirds and
delicately elongated avatars succeed wonderfully, but not one character is
developed into a person we can care about. Unfortunately, neither the wonder of
the forest nor the magic of 3D is enough to balance the emptiness of the people
and the script. But, as Jake says with wooden precision, "It was worth a try."

Among the
potentially interesting bits is a communication system that exists among the
roots of sacred trees. Inhabitants of this world have long tails that sport USB
plugs at their tips. With a swish of the USB tail, they can plug into the sacred
communication channels that connect them with their ancestors. My final,
indelible thought was “Boy, am I glad I don't have one of those."